


Avocados are Not A Dessert Food

by swordandpen



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Fluff, Food Issues, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-27
Updated: 2018-05-27
Packaged: 2019-05-14 07:55:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 902
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14765613
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/swordandpen/pseuds/swordandpen
Summary: Adam finally has enough to eat, holy shit.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> cw - mention of the kind of brain fuckery that happens when you get used to worrying about food availability. it doesn't become serious in this story. also opal appears briefly but i didn't tag her as courtesy to those who might then expect more than like a paragraph with her.

Adam’s university classmates complained incessantly about the dining hall after the first couple weeks.

Adam, though, did not.

It’s not that he thought the food was very good. It was regular cafeteria food after all. And sometimes, yes, outright weird or gross. Avocado should stay out of desserts, he concluded. He learned this because he sent Ronan a photo of the ice-crunchy avocado gelato. Ronan dared him to try it. Adam really should have seen that coming. 

Generally the cafeteria merely labeled pasta with vodka sauce just ‘vodka’ (good for midterms week, someone joked) and chronically avoided spice above “mild.” Adam, especially after shifts at his new jobs and marathon study sessions, did not particularly care.

The knowledge that he’d already paid for the food, and more importantly that he could eat until he was full, was a little hard to internalize at first. He ate just enough to get himself through the day. But one day a woman on the dining hall staff who, looking at his account when he swiped his I.D. card, laughed - not unkindly. 

“At this rate you’ll have half your meal plan left at the end of the year! You know it doesn’t carry over, right?”

The middle-aged woman, whose name tag said Paula, smiled again at his slightly wide-eyed inspection of the screen she pointed to. She waved her hand to usher him into the cafeteria.

“Go eat, you look like you need it.”

Out of habit and embarrassment he said, “thank you, ma’am” in a thicker accent than he usually let slip through, and walked towards the tables, getting flagged down by some friendly people he recognized almost immediately.

-  
In retrospect, it might not have just been the happiness of being at college (and at least physically away from the places he’d been hurt worst in his life) that caused the gradual changes. School and work were tiring, and he still didn’t sleep enough - but some of the perpetual tiredness was slipping off his shoulders, bit by bit. 

He hadn’t even realized how often he got light-headed from hunger, until one day it happened for the first time in over a month. He couldn’t tell, at first, what was different. At first, being the person that he was, he worried that he’d got mentally weak. He could tolerate it before, why did it distract him so much now? That bout of self-flagellation lasted over ten minutes, until his hallmate dragged him to dinner and he felt better enough to focus on something else.


	2. Chapter 2

He went to the Barns for Christmas break. Opal met him before he even got to the door. She was carrying a hammer, and trying to chew on it, while Ronan chased half-heartedly after. To Adam’s relief, she dropped the hammer before leaping to hug him.

It was only through Ronan lifting her off the ground and promising potato chips with dinner that Adam was allowed to walk inside unhindered. 

Eventually Ronan told Opal to go the fuck to sleep (whether she did so or not was anyone’s guess, but Ronan told the same to Chainsaw and so Opal followed her somewhere out of sight and hearing. Opal enjoyed pestering Chainsaw, who enjoyed taunting her by staying just out of reach of the very fast but wingless creature-child. 

Ronan and Adam were left to each other’s attention. Their first kiss in months was more like a clumsy collision, and neither of them minded. 

After the initial excitement of reunion, when he and Ronan were tired enough from making out to just lay on the couch together, Adam saw Ronan looking at him a bit more analytically than usual.

(Still like a sap, though. Adam tried not to blush at the look and how oddly comforting it was to have Ronan resting most of his weight on Adam.)

Ronan spoke first. “You look different somehow.”

Adam tried not to get nervous. 

“Not bad-different, dumbass. And not that you looked at all bad before - “

“Oh, i didn’t look bad? How flattering.”

“You know what I fuckin’ mean. You just look like you’ve been eating closer to enough for once in your life. Like - strong.” Ronan blushed and ducked his face away to rest it on Adam’s chest. Adam felt slighty victorious, through his surprise, at causing that without even trying to. 

Until Ronan lifted his head, suddenly with his familiar razor-sharp smirk, and said, “I bet I can still lift you, though.”

Ronan did. He rolled off the couch and lifted Adam in what was a goddamn bridal-style carry. That led to some fake-annoyed squawking from Adam, until it led to more kissing.

Eventually Ronan let Adam down, claiming with a wicked look that it was so his hands could be free. And ultimately let his guard down as well - after they were nearly falling asleep on yet another couch, Adam slipped off it, bent his knees, and lifted Ronan into his arms. He might have been able to do that 4 months ago - he was never weak, he got through three physical jobs and through walking for hours on end often. But some of that was by numbing himself to exhaustion and pain, sleepwalking. More and more, he didn’t want that. He carried his (still pretty heavy) boyfriend to bed, Ronan’s long legs nearly hitting the doorway until Adam walked through sideways.

It was a while before either of them actually slept.


End file.
